Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/548

 516 G-r ant's plan of campaign. [i864 it was about to be eclipsed by the stubbornness and sacrifice of the final struggle. On April 30, 1864, Grant's army numbered a total of 122,146, organised and equipped to a degree of perfection rarely equalled anywhere. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, by careful estimate, numbered 61,953. Grant however estimates that according to the Federal method of including details, extra duty men and absentees, it should have been rated at 80,000. Grant's numerical superiority was counterbalanced by the advantage which Lee drew from a defensive campaign along interior lines, over ground the topography of which he had learned by heart, and amid a population where every white man was his ally and scout and Grant's enemy. But his greatest strength lay in the belief of the Confederate army in its own invincibility. It did not stop to ask whether this belief was well-founded ; it knew that for three years it had effectually blocked the way to Richmond. In the new ordeal, however, this defensive power was neutralised by what it had not yet encountered, the imperturbable will and unyielding determination of a single man, who now commanded the Union armies. Grant's main conception of his new task was as simple as the combined policy agreed upon with Sherman. His intention was to move directly against Lee's army, and if practicable crush it before it could reach Richmond. If he could not succeed in this, then he would follow it thither, enclose it in the city, and capture it by a siege. If it escaped, he would follow it wherever it went, and destroy it before it could effect a junction with Johnston. Accordingly, nearly a month before the movement began, he instructed Meade : " Lee's army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also." At the same date, he had already decided upon two contributory move- ments. Butler with 30,000 men was to ascend the James river from Fortress Monroe, seize and fortify City Point, and endeavour to gain Petersburg, and destroy the surrounding railroads. Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley, and Crook in the valley of the Kanawha, were to operate against the lines of communication north-west of Richmond. Butler's movement failed in everything except that he was able to seize and hold City Point, subsequently of great use to Grant. The movements from the Shenandoah and the Kanawha also had no im- mediate result, but underwent many fluctuations between success and failure in the long months that followed. On May 4, 1864, Grant, moving by the left past Lee's right, began crossing the Rapidan ; and by the evening of the 5th his whole army, including a train of 4000 waggons, was safely over the stream. But already on the morning of that day, Lee's forces endeavoured to strike his moving columns in flank before they were yet through the difficult region known as the Wilderness a region of interspersed forest, thicket and swamp, narrow and neglected roads, and only occasional